What is a webhook?

Benefits of Webhooks

1. Flexible and customizable.
   
2. Sends instant notifications to third party applications.
   
3. Users can integrate with their own custom applications or any third party applications.
   
4. Real-time data synchronization.
   
5. A complete webhooks list, webhook failures, and successes are provided.
   

Types of Webhooks

1. Webhooks List: Using Zoho People webhooks, you can communicate with the third party applications by sending instant notifications every time when a user performs an action on the organizational account data.
   
2. Failure Webhooks: The failure webhooks are listed on this page along with the details such as webhook name, form name, associated record, latest invoke time, redo an action and the response message. You can also filter the webhooks using the following options such as forms, the name of the webhooks and the duration period.
   
3. Successful Webhooks: The successful webhooks are listed on this page along with the details such as webhook name, form name, associated record, latest invoke time and the response message. You can also able to filter the webhooks using the following options such as forms, the name of the webhook and the duration period.

API

Fields in Webhooks

Set up Webhook in Zoho People

1. From your homepage, navigate to Settings > Select a Service > Automation > Actions > Webhooks.
   
2. Click Add Webhook.
   
3. In the Webhook set up page configure as follows.
   
4. Select the form in the service where the Webhook bust be trigged upon change event.
   
5. Enter a Webhook name.
   
6. Specify the third party URL to notify.
   
7. Enter the description (purpose of the webhook).
   
8. Selecta API method as either POST or GET based on the requirement.
   
9. Specify the necessary Query Parameters:
   
   

   Specify the parameter name and the corresponding parameter value. You can add only 10 entity fields as parameters specify the parameter in user defined format. Eg: XML, JSON etc., specify the custom parameter name and parameter value. You can add only 5 custom parameters.
   
   
   
   
10. Click Save.
    Webhook will be saved and available to be tagged to a workflow.

Map a Webhook to a Workflow

Use Case

Change Employee Status in Exit Form via Webhook

Let's consider a scenario - An employee is resigning his job and you want to change the status as Resigned in the Employee form. Before Webhook was introduced, you need to manually update changes twice in the Employee form as well as in the Exit form. But now, you can automatically POST notification in the Exit form by configuring Webhook using API. Please follow the steps below to configure webhook for this scenario.

1. From your homepage, navigate to Settings > Select a Service > Automation > Actions > Webhooks.
   
2. Click Add Webhook.
   
3. In the Webhook set up page configure as follows.
   
4. Select the Employee form from the list
   
5. Enter a Webhook name.
   
6. Specify the third party URL to notify.
   

   

   https://people.zoho.com/people/api/forms/P_Separation/insertRecord
7. Enter a description
8. Select API method type as POST
   
9. Enter the URL query parameters as follows
   

   

   For the User Defined format: Specify the Parameter Name xmlData and the Value Description as shown below:
   

   <Request>

   <Record>

   <field name="Employee_ID">${ZOHO_LINK_ID}</field>

   <field name="Interviewer">${Reporting_To}</field>

   <field name="Separation_date">${Exit_Date}</field>

   </Record>

   </Request>
   

   

   In the above XML string, the tag field represents the fields in Zoho People, the name represents the label name of the field and the value tag represents data to be pushed.
10. Specify Custom Parameters: "authtoken" in the Parameter Name and the authtoken key in Parameter Value.
    

    

    To use the API, you will require Zoho People authentication token from your Zoho People account. For Zoho People API Guide, Click here.
11. Click Save.
    

Map this Webhook to a Workflow and define the trigger events.